Sunday, September 9, 2012

On Rent

The summer has finally come to Germany. You may say it's almost mid-September, and days are getting shorter, and the mornings and evenings chillier, but no, it's summer here. Since we didn't have any of it in June and July, and just a little tiny piece in August, now one can enjoy a really nice and sunny weather, garnished today with hot and dry wind which is blowing freely on the empty Sunday streets.

The wind was lifting and mixing up my hair as I was walking to an appointment for one more apartment to rent. I got one more "no" actually. In fact, we are miserable tenant-candidates with our two kids and not-even-one-year job contract. Fortunately, the summer wind alleviates this "no", blows it away, and the humiliating "no" which makes me feel poor and homeless, disappears, flows away and crushes into the bushes.

Something will come out, in the end, and in the end we will settle down. But this experience definitely made me humbler, and put me in the shoes of the poor and the discriminated. And I am still so much more privileged than many others, being white, educated, knowing languages, having my parents behind my back, my husband next to me, my colleagues who would help me. Knowing theoretically that the discriminated and the poor are having hard time fighting for their living is one thing; walking the streets and not knowing where to bring my family because nobody would take the risk to rent me an apartment, that's another.

But in all that, I still feel grateful. For those who always had led a rich and easy life are often forced to forgetfulness. That is why I never wanted to be rich. And here I have it, I am not rich. But the wind is on my side.


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